Transcript

Viral Change: Self-Discoveries During Covid-19 | Saman Arfaie | TEDxUAlberta

[Music] to deny vulnerability or to build resilience to observe challenges or to act upon them to find the light or to stay in the darkness every day of our lives we're presented with numerous possibilities options challenges crossroads in many ways we exercise agency over the things we can do and what we can control but what happens when we become your bystanders the grandiose forces of nature when despite our best efforts we're humbled by these forces we are all familiar with this concept of things that were taken away from us going to your favorite restaurant eating your favorite food getting a haircut taking your significant other to the cinema to the movie theater taking your children to the park so they could play with others birthday celebrations of the outdoors all of these became absent luxuries why because of this covet 19. kovat 19 was an undeniable force and it took the world by storm since january 23rd 2020 when the first case of kova 19 was identified in canada virtually no one's life has been the same with increasing number of deaths largely due to respiratory infections we have lost our senses in many ways with the fear and containing this phenomenon has become of vital importance to the preservation of human life in canada and the world over and with 40 000 deaths as i stand for you and speak in this very country this virus has made us to reassess our priorities i'd like to you can see the illustration there now there are certain features of covenanting that truly stands out the first is a sense of imminent danger an invisible enemy that we cannot see with the naked eye that it's out there and it can get us second is panic this overwhelming fear of uncertainty about the presence and also about the future third imminent danger covet 19 directly elicits responses to our adaptive and innate immunity and it's very unpredictable how this virus acts in different age cohorts and fourth contagiousness or transferability when you have an uninfected individual and an infected individual in close proximity this virus through the aerosols of these liquid droplets can easily transfer and as it does it can also mutate you have different variants each of which could be resistant to different therapies and vaccination that was a micro level let's talk about the macro level how does it affect society at large one of the features that i can noted is communication breakdown with a flood of information peer-reviewed articles it was very difficult to separate truth from falsehood this flood of information really made us think of how should we act and how should we behave in this course of pandemic with very serious consequences if otherwise shifts in mental health we've seen several speakers talk about stories and i will share mine too but there's no question that the strained by the pandemic directly affected us whether it was work whether it was school we felt that strain anxiety depression skyrocketed choices versus priorities as a citizen of this country how should i act and how odd i behave in relation to the different policies of the nation so at some point i need to let go and relinquish my liberties for the benefit of society also what constitutes an essential business and what should be closed these were some of the struggles and the questions that we face as a nation so to the world and of course mass mobilization for policies to work we need citizens to be active to follow guidelines and to do what is best and we saw that now it it still boggles my mind when we think of coronavirus what are we really talking about this is a strand of hair we all have it for the most part this is a fine beach in the sand this is a red blood cells that carries nutrients where can we find covalent 19 right there i'm supposed to not move but i'll do my best so something at the micro level 10 to the minus 6 meters can really elicit a change that covers the entirety of this planet of all of the populations of the cities in the world and it's remarkable to think and contextualize this uh very briefly i don't know how many of you have seen the coronavirus in real life but what the name suggests is this green projections these spike proteins that attaches to different cells and it comes from the word latin corona meaning meaning crown so you can appreciate that viruses are the living border between life and death because they must infect a host organism in order for them to function and they must replicate their rna in this case so that they can continue moving forward with that cycle now i cannot stop but to also show you how this manifests to the body so you can appreciate two different images these are chest x-rays and not to make things complicated but help you this is our windpipe it's a trachea and at bifurcase you have two different lungs it's flipped in this image the right side points to the left side and what you can appreciate in two different individuals one is 29 one is 56. the lungs start to develop these opacities like someone is like erasing them with something and it gradually covers in this case it's in the lower left zone and it progresses it progresses to the entirety of the lung and we can also appreciate that trend in the figure in the bottom okay so we have a sense so who am i i'm a medical student and it was an absolute honor when i first got accepted to medical school it was a long arduous journey having lived a nomadic lifestyle in three different countries in five different cities tehran vancouver berkeley san francisco and toronto i had finally received the acceptance to my dream school but there was a hesitation there because with the state of the pandemic there were many questions that i had would i be physically moving there what would the curriculum look like how would i learn medicine and transfer it how would i meet my classmates over zoom screens right but at the same time i recognize the immense privilege it takes to be in a position to use your hands your brain and your heart to directly intervene in life-changing conditions to prescribe medications and to help people in very critical states and another part about medicine that we have to appreciate is that medicine is not just theoretical knowledge compiled in textbooks and lecture slides medicine is about the human dimension it's complex it's raw it's multi-dimensional and there is one story in particular that i want to tell you about it's the first death that i observed as a medical student if you talk to any healthcare professional they will always be able to tell you with granular level of detail what that event was like i was in my first year medical studies last year very compassionate and caring physician was teaching me and i remember being in this geriatric center with this individual who had just passed and the physician told me the clinical pearls and the things i had to know and then we were supposed to go into that room together and he asked me before we went and said someone are you ready and i wasn't what happened at that very moment when i saw that gentleman who had unfortunately died the first thing that i thought wasn't the medicine i was crying and it's not the kind of crying that you you prepare my face became wet and i didn't realize why and as i looked at this man who had just passed immediately beside him was a frame it was him with his wife it was a mediterranean setting they were looking at the camera they were smiling and it made me think and realized what is it that really matters in life what is it really so in our world in our life there is a sense of center right now i'm standing on this red carpet my brain my spinal cord my feet is directly connected to the ground there's a sense of familiarity there's something that i understand and there's many examples that we can see a tree with its roots disseminating through the bed of the earth is shipped with an anchor at the very bottom of the ocean stabilizing it the opposite of this is decentralization and what that does is it's a set of complete drift where you lose that center and you're not sure what point you're directly at and these forces are directly active upon us and this covet 19 pandemic was a great illustration of that you can feel it also when you're at the plane there's nothing underneath you and you're not sure what to do you shake your feet starts to tremble because we do not know what the unknown is because we cannot predict the unknown and that sense of decentralization is unique to all of us during the state of the pandemic now another part about this theme of this conference is the idea of finding light and i want to argue for you that light is a force that comes from within it's an inside out process you have to excavate the reflection through thinking to find that source of illumination and once you find that and it's difficult i'm not going to make it easy because it it takes a lot of time and effort to really understand yourself and those around you but once you do there's a beacon of like there's something there and that amplifies with time and that's very very important to realize because what's the alternative of that coveted 19 does not have a static core it changes and as it changed we mimicked that uncertainty that decentralization we were going up down left right we had lost our senses of center during this pandemic there are some perils that i want to share with you there are not too many but i will elaborate in fine detail the first is a duty towards the self when you think about all of your bodies at the individual level there are armies of cells that are there to protect you from anything and there are different names for them this is a great cartoon there's b cells t-cells macrophages that's not what matters but what matters and is reassuring is that your body is doing everything possible to keep you alive to maintain your growth to stabilize you for a sense of homeostasis and we feel a sense of obligation towards our body because when we realize what the body is doing for us we feel obliged to take care of ourselves too for that very reason in that relationship the second is emotional connections our sense of memory our sense of virtue the sense that i have of myself of the present and the past and the future is directly tied like a spider web with the people that are central to our lives people that we couldn't see during the pandemic people that we lost and that's a very very important concept to realize that what truly matters in addition to that is that emotional bond and the greek american philosopher alexander nehemiah princeton university writes beautifully he says like metaphors and works of art the people who matter to us are so far as we're concerned inexhaustible they always remain a step beyond the furthest point our knowledge of them has reached the only if and as long as they still matter to us and of course we have the storm within our span of life maybe within the digits of our hands there will be experiences that may shatter us that may bring us to a sense of complete decentralization where the foundations are completely lost and what should we do we should stabilize ourselves we should stand still confront what there is not knowing the outcome in any way extend our arms and tell ourselves that we are here to stay and do not ever forget how virtuous that is to not know the outcome to not have any sense of guarantee but still be willing to find that sense of sinner for yourself and it amplifies like light for other people and why are we obsessed with these stories because deep down we need to find other stories of people who have made it through or at least are making that attempt so we can too and one of my favorite authors the japanese genius uh novelist haruki murakami writes in kafka on the shore and he says and once the storm is over you will not remember how you made it through how you managed to survive you will not even be sure whether the storm is really over but one thing is certain when you come out of the storm you will not be the same person who walked in so there is a sense of development there's a sense of evolution that's unique to each and every one of us and i don't know you and i don't know your stories but i do know you because there are certain elements of humanity that is preserved in all of us and we can connect through that when we reflect when we re-examine when we go through that storm we realize that is a shared human journey regardless of culture regardless of age regardless of all the other variables okay so we've established that i've told you about my life about my background i've told you about some features of the virus i've told you some truly life-changing experiences that i went through okay but why am i here why did i travel thousands of kilometers from montreal to edmonton to be with you today there is a reason i'm 26 years old and for the last really 26 years of my life i have been thinking about the things that truly matter the things that make us unique the things that we pursue and the reason for that pursuit why we pursue them and after a lot of thinking after a lot of reflection i can only point to two main fundamental principles the first is a relationship with the self this self is an enigmatic process we live in our body we embody our body but there's more to that and that is a sense of growth because at every instance of our life that process is dynamic and it's changing and it never ends and it's extremely important for us to connect with ourselves and remember during moments of complete void that the best friend for you is you so to be able to be at a sense of acceptance to hold yourself not knowing whether things are going to be fine at night but establishing that relationship because that relationship sets the precedence for every other relationship of your life the second arguably equally important as a first the relationship we built with the people we love care and trust in that very same order losing loved ones during the pandemic not being able to see them during the pandemic made us realize the holes that are filled in from that sense of ambiguity from that sense of tremor from that sense of decentralization and as we live the people around us that matter to us will be a very strong part of our life and it gets stick to your brain to the amphitheaters of your gray and white matter they're always alive and you can always refresh those memories to remind yourself what is it about your sense of virtue about the sense of your values that makes things worth living and truly what better way to see the world through the eyes of those we love thank you very much [Music]